Tag Archives: Furious 7

Review: Sigh….Just when you think the Fast & Furious franchise has run out of steam, ideas and any originality, they squeeze out #7 in the series and make 800 million bucks. Forget the rating; if you are an adrenaline junkie, this film is for you.

As for this cinematic exercise in FX, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and the gang have received immunity from their various felonies thanks to their working with federal agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), so everyone is set to relax and live the good life. Then kaboom, Dom’s house explodes, and the game is afoot. Something to do with putting Deckard Shaw’s (Jason Statham) brother in a coma in the last furious flick, and Deckard is a bit annoyed over it. So he intends to wreak revenge with Dom’s crew.

What follows is a series of capers strung together with varying degrees of logic. Just don’t expect any of the car sequences to make any sense; in real life no one would have survived any of the stunts. It is Paul Walker’s last hurrah as Brian O’Conner; the producers managed to finish his sequences with doubles and CGI work. The most entertaining actor in the film is Kurt Russell (aka Frank Petty), a U.S. black ops honcho who enlists Dom and the gang to help him retrieve a software system called God’s Eye, which apparently can tell where everyone is sitting at any moment in time. (Now that is scary!) Russell plays the role almost seriously but with tongue definitely in cheek along with the best of the witty dialogue.

Huh? What The….: Jeez, what do we exclude from this movie? I especially liked 5 cars falling out of a plane at high altitude and being able to land right on a narrow 2 lane mountain road. Most equipment drops are lucky to land within a half mile of the target.

How about people falling out of fast moving cars and not getting serious road rash, never mind broken bones?

With all the high tech gizmos in these operations, Turetto’s crew have to drive like chimps on crack with one hand because they’re using hand held walkie-talkies? Headphones, dudes!

There’s a scene in LA with a militarized air ship blasting the city to smithereens for what seems like an eternity. Where’s the police choppers? Where are the fighter planes from the LA Air Station?

Then there is the empty streets in LA before midnight where everyone is tear-assing around in their muscle cars. Seriously? At that hour you’d be lucky to go 20 MPH with the clogged traffic patterns.

Dialogue Nuggets: Dom goes philosophic on us – “The open road helps you think about where you’ve been, and where you’re going.”

Hobbs – “You’ve just earned yourself a dance with the devil. You’re under arrest.”